When Will Land Rights for South Asian Women Become a Reality?

In Meghalaya, India’s northeastern biodiversity hotspot, all three major tribes are matrilineal. Children take the mother’s family name, while daughters inherit the family lands.

Because women own land and have always decided what is grown on it and what is conserved, the state not only has a strong climate-resistant food system but also some of the rarest edible and medicinal plants, researchers said. The importance of protecting the full spectrum of women’s property rights becomes even more urgent as the number of women-led households in rural areas around the world continues to grow.

While their ancient culture empowers Meghalaya’s indigenous women with land ownership that vastly improves their resilience to the food shocks climate change springs on them, for an overwhelming majority of women in developing countries, culture does not allow them even a voice in family or community land management. Nor do national laws support their rights to own the very land they sow and harvest to feed their families.

read more here @ The Wire

Chacoan Society - Medieval Matriarchy

Early human societies were run by a female elite | Daily Mail Online

A new genetic analysis of the burial chamber of a complex prehistoric society known as the Chacoans in New Mexico has found that elite status was passed down through the maternal line from 800-1130AD.

The Chacoans - one of North America’s earliest complex societies - are particularly difficult to study because they did not use a written language.

'Pueblo Bonito' is the largest of these great houses with over 800 rooms. Ancestral 'Pueblo' Native Americans, known as Chacoans, occupied the structure between AD 828 and 1126. 

Read More Here @ Daily Mail

Ancient Cahokia ‘America’s first city’

Ancient remains at ‘America’s first city’ reveal women held high-power positions | Daily Mail Online

Almost 50 years ago, archaeologists excavating an ancient city just outside of St. Louis discovered a mass burial site with an unusual central feature – two bodies arranged atop a bed of beads, with several other bodies encircling them.

It was once thought that the elaborate ‘beaded burial’ structure at Cahokia was built as a monument to male power – but now, researchers suggest this is not the case.

A new analysis of the remains reveals that one of these central bodies is actually female, and researchers say the discovery of similar male-female pairs and the remains of a child indicates that women played an important role in society.

In the new study, published to the journal American Antiquity, researchers with the Illinois State Archaeological Survey at the University of Illinois and colleagues found that there are both male and female remains buried at the site of the Native American city, Cahokia. 

Cahokia is said to be North America's first city, and is the largest pre-Columbian settlement north of Mexico. 

Read More: 

• Daily Mail Online: America's First City
• CBS News: Ancient burial mound reveals role of women
• Ancient Origins: Unraveling the mystery of the beaded burial

Meghalaya: Modern Day Matriarchy

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

The one and only place in India where the birth of a baby girl is greeted with ecstasy is Meghalaya, where the mother's family, waiting in the corridor of the maternity ward, break into laughter, hugs and clap their hands for joy.

''When a boy is born, the reaction is very different, subdued - 'Oh, OK, fine, whatever God gives us must be accepted,'' says Merle Gilford, a nurse at Nazareth Hospital in Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya, a picturesque state of wooded hills and mists in the north-east.

In male-dominated, boy-fixated Indian society, Meghalaya is an aberration. It holds one of the world's last surviving matrilineal societies. The 1.2 million strong Khasi tribe invests all power in its women. For thousands of years, the Khasis have traced their descent, inheritance and lineage from mother to daughter.